Posts Tagged ‘richard millen’

This year’s 22nd Annual Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) Conference had an emotional start to the day. The morning began with a Moment of Silence for our dear departed friend Richard Millen that included his son Jeff saying a few words on his behalf, followed by the awarding of the new SCMA-sponsored Richard Millen scholarship at the Western Justice Center in Pasadena, where the bright and promising recipient used his acceptance speech to quote some of Richard’s articles. It was odd hearing the words of our 89 year old Zen guru mediator being channeled through the voice of a young man in his early 20’s, and with almost equal passion.

As if that wasn’t enough, Laurel Kaufer spoke next about this year’s Cloke-Millen Peacemaker of the Year award recipients – the women who carry life sentences in Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, who wrote to Laurel and asked her to come and teach them conflict resolution and peacemaking skills, just as Laurel had done in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina with the residents on the ground there. We all watched tearful women talk about being murders, with life sentences, and learning for the first time in their lives to listen deeply, reflect back, ask open-ended questions, and how to create peace. Chilling.

It was no wonder to me that when they awarded me the L. Randolph Lowry Award for education and learning in the field, and I began to talk about what it meant to me, especially being named for my friend, mentor and partner in traveling-the-country-teaching-mediation-and-negotiation, Randy Lowry. To give you a clearer picture, Randy and I have taught side-by-side, from the gorgeous Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, to to a group of franchisees San Francisco, a law firm in Chicago, a legal department in Cincinnati, nurses at a huge Dallas Hospital, for a university in Jackson, Mississippi and Hilton Head, South Carolina, at Randy’s new home at Lipscomb University in Nashville, and to insurance adjusters in 15 states over 18 months. We have sat side by side telling stories in the airport at 1am as our flight is delayed, knowing we’ll be up teaching at 8am. We have been through a lot together. He was there for me when my father passed away five years ago, and he and Rhonda have had me to their home, here in L.A. and also after they moved to Nashville. Randy trusted me to mentor his son, when John entered the training and consulting business with us. And Randy was the one who believed in me, that as a non-attorney mediator, I had something to teach to lawyers and judges at Pepperdine Law School and for the California Center for Judicial Education and Research. He named me Director of Pepperdine’s Mediating the Litigated Case program, a position I held for 7 years, until he had left the University.

So, nobody blamed me when I choked up while accepting the award. It was the proudest moment of my professional life (so far).

In order to save repeating what others have already done today, I’m going to point you to two very kind and thoughtful summaries of what yesterday’s conference meant to these folks:

There is also some thoughtful commentary here from Joe on attorney, judge and non-attorney mediators and what each brings to the table (and a candid assessment on what they don’t).

A final thought, for mediators, attending conferences and training courses is important – not just for what you learn, but for the opportunity to share the experience with other colleagues. As I said in my keynote yesterday, our profession is an individual one where we are all, as my freind Alex Williams like to say, in our own foxhole fighting our own battle. Coming to conferences and training courses refreshes us, keeps us tuned up with new tools and refreshing old ones, and keeps us in touch with those around us who share the burden of sitting between two or more people who are in an intractable fight, and thinking that we can do something to help them. It can be lonely work. I find it’s always good to get together with friends and colleagues who are doing this work, and share our stories, our challenges, and our learnings. Just food for thought…

Just one week ago, members of the mediation community gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate the life of our dear friend and mentor Richard Millen (see Mediation World Loses a Patriarch). My friend Phyllis Pollack wrote a wonderful summary of that night in her blog.

Today, we lost the great teacher and coach John R. Wooden, long time and legendary UCLA basketball coach.

I’m wondering with these teachers now gone, will we continue to follow their lessons? I’m wondering with them now gone, the Dalai Lama turning 75 and Nelson Mandella turning 92 next month, I’m wondering who will be our next great teachers? Who will walk the talk and live a life that embodies both greatness and goodness?

Wondering this makes me proud to have been in the company of Ken Cloke last week. Ken was a co-founder of Mediators Beyond Borders and has published prolifically. Ken is a great teacher who lives a life of compassion and grace. Erica Ariel Fox is another. She founded the Global Negotiation Insight Institute and is working on her first book. I see many other great mediator friends doing incredible work – teaching conflict resolution skills in prisons, or to children. Most of them are growing and preparing into our next great generation of teachers.

Sports might offer us Coach K at Duke basketball or Phil Jackson and his blend of Native American, Zen and Christian learnings, known for giving his multi-millionaire players books on philosophy, spirituality and balance.

I don’t think we’re going to see teachers of the caliber of Richard Millen and John Wooden any time soon. They had so much in common, not the least of which was, to quote Kareen Abdul Jabbar on Coach Wooden, “he sent a lot of good people into this world.”

Coach Wooden had said that his proudest accomplishment as a player was being named Scholar Athlete of the Year at Purdue. Richard Millen, a humble young man from Tennessee became a Harvard Law graduate. The national college basketball players of the year (man and woman) receives the John R. Wooden Award; the Southern California Mediation Association’s peacemaker of the year receives the Cloke-Millen Award. Both men were selfless – Coach Wooden was paid $32,500 in his final year at UCLA in 1975; Richard Millen also made a small fraction of those mediators who he mentored. Coach lived by, “Success is the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of being.” While Richard Millen would agree, perhaps his favorite was, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: ‘we did it ourselves’.”

Who will lead us next? Who will be our next great teacher? Who will be worthy of us learning from? Will it be you?

I am deeply saddened to announce that Richard Millen passed away today. Most mediators in southern California knew and were touched by Richard, whether they knew it or not. He was a motive power in forming the first court-annexed mediation program in California, in founding the now-mighty Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA), and served on boards and committees advising on mediation policy until his last months.

Richard was 89 years young and was one of those whose inspiration created organizations that have become pillars of the southern California mediation universe. He was the motive power that helped to create the first court-annexed mediation program with the Los Angeles Superior Court (now the largest court and largest mediation program in the world). He was a trainer with the Neighborhood Justice Center, now Dispute Resolution Services (DRS) and a division of the Los Angeles County Bar (an adoption he never sanctioned). Richard trained under Bill Lincoln and was atop the training tree, training Bill Hobbs, who trained anyone who ever trained in Los Angeles outside of Pepperdine (me included). Long before he taught at Pepperdine Law School’s Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution and California State Dominguez Hills’ Master’s program in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding, and with me at my Institute of Mediation Studies (previous incarnation of the American Institute of Mediation), he held mediator meetings in his pool house – meeting’s we’d probably call round tables or study groups today.

Richard also sat with Randy Lowry, Lauren Burton and others at a retreat that became the birthplace for the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) over 20 years ago, where leaves as a “Board Member In Perpetuity”. He meant so much to SCMA that they named their annual Peacemaker of the Year award after him, along with Ken Cloke. He served on about every organizational board in southern California, including DRS and the State Bar’s Standing Committee on ADR.

Many of us were trained by him, influenced by him, and heard him speak at conferences, as often from the audience as from the front of the room. A deeply spiritual man, with vigorous energy and strong beliefs about how mediation should remain “pure” and uninstitutionalized, he continued to mediate cases at 88 years of age.

Richard was one of the first interdisciplinary-trained mediators. A Harvard lawyer, his studies to become a more complete mediator began by reading books by Krishnamurti, Ken Wilbur, Ram Daas, Martin Buber, Alan Watts, Brugh Joy, Jerry Jampolsky, Eric Frohm, quantum physicists, such as Frejof Capra and Alan Wolf, and continued to include the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bhagavad Gita, and by Da Free John, the Knee of Listening, and by Gary Zuchav, the Seat of the Soul. He then dove into reading about Buddhism, Zen, Dao, the Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, the Dali Lama, the occult, Freud, Jung, William James, Elizabeth Kubla Ross, and Virginia Satir. When Richard was asked, “Isn’t that really more spirituality or philosophy than mediation?”, he would answer, “What’s the difference? They’re all the same!”

Richard preached that mediation was “a new epistemology of thinking and speaking about conflict” and “Conflict emanates from a break down in relationship of the parties”. He’d say that people didn’t have legal problems until they gave them to a lawyer. He preached the fundamentals (some might say lost art) of mediation – active listening, reframing, I messages, neutral language and self-determination. He often proudly quoted a poem by Tap Stephens that ended with “…and they did for themselves what they had come for the mediator to do.” He believed strongly in “Dialogue” as defined and used by quantum physicist Dr. David Bohm.

Richard called himself a half-lawyer, half-entrepreneur, having served the majority of his professional years as a transactional lawyer “doing deals”. He prided himself on being a trusted fiduciary, and loved when his clients would say, “Just ask Good Ol’ Dick Millen. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me”. He started in business at the ripe age of 10 with a paper delivery route. Living in Knoxville, he graduated from the University of Tennessee, and then it was off to the army where he prided himself on his days in the cavalry, stationed in Italy during World War II. When he returned, he took full advantage of the GI Bill by attending Harvard Law School. His stumbling into mediation some 25 years ago was more due to his spiritual enlightening and personal growth as a natural outgrowth of his business and legal backgrounds, than it was a career choice. Mediation chose Richard, more than the other way around.

Richard is survived by his wife, Mary Alice, four adult children, several grandchildren, and a community of thousands of mediators scattered throughout southern California and well beyond.

Richard was my surrogate grandfather, my mentor and my dear friend. When I last visited with him about three weeks ago, and he told me of the cancer, he said he was being “positive and creative” in his approach to dealing with it – being a mediator to the end.

Richard liked to quote Blaise Pascal, a colleague of Decartes, who wrote, “the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.” This was Richard and his huge, knowing heart. Teaching us until the end.

We have lost a great peacemaker, a passionate teacher, and a bright, glowing spirit. His presence will be missed.